


shakes me makes me lighter

by oneatatime



Category: Kamen Rider Blade
Genre: M/M, and others I haven't listed specifically here and there, like Go and Rinna, no real knowledge of Drive is needed, there are some Drive characters too, this is a Blade focus, two tiny cameos of other Riders too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneatatime/pseuds/oneatatime
Summary: In which Hajime deals with his idiot friend, and with the indignities of humanity.Post-Blade reunion fic.





	shakes me makes me lighter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [butyoumight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butyoumight/gifts).



> Spoilers abound. Title is from Teardrop.

It started with his blog. 

Well. It continued, with his blog. The blog wasn’t even Hajime’s idea. Amane-chan was insistent on him coming into the twenty-first century before the twenty-second century started, and so she provided him with a website address and a password and suddenly he had a blog.

He found it therapeutic, in a way. He could post photos that his fans (fans! He had fans! Human fans who enjoyed his photography!) didn’t have to pay for. He thought uncertainly that Amane-chan was probably right and this was a nice thing to do. He could talk a little about how he’d found this spot or what he’d thought when he’d seen that light through those trees. 

If he didn’t want to talk, he could just post a photo. He could still exist and still be – be seen by people who knew a little about him and cared. He still wasn’t quite sure why that mattered. He could also get technical, too, now that he’d been doing this for long enough to know some technical terms. 

It was really quite logical (and really incredibly annoying) that Kenzaki first commented on the picture where he’d spoken about empty space. Because really, who else had he meant by talking about absences?

Hajime blinked, and refreshed the screen. The comment didn’t disappear, and it continued to not disappear. Amane-chan butted against his side . Quite a bit higher than when she used to do it, fourteen years ago or so when he’d first met her, but her shoulder was still lower than his where he leaned against the bar. 

He put an arm around her, noting absently that his other hand was shaking where he was holding onto the laptop on the bar at the Jacaranda. Her hair smelled like strawberries. 

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer, but she craned her neck over to look at the screen anyway. 

She straightened suddenly, and he shifted to avoid her cracking her head on his chin. “Kenzaki-san? You think it’s Kenzaki-san?” 

“I think so.” He nodded, far more shaky and unsure than he was comfortable with.

Most of his commenters, if they were using a little picture of something, used one that was either generic (a smiling face, or a heart) or related to the photo (such as when he posted a photo of a cold winter morning and one of his commenters suggested a hot bath, and used a little picture of a bath). 

This was a comment on a photo of the forest, showing how the ecosystem had accommodated a missing tree which had been chopped down. The comment was cheerful and complimentary, and used a little picture of a heart. 

And a spade. 

* * * 

It continued for a few months. With advice from Kotarou, he turned on the “IP logging”. He checked his notifications perhaps more often than before, in between his work at the Jacaranda, his photography, and of course ferrying Amane-chan everywhere that needed a car. (She was working on her licence, but she and Haruka were both quite happy for Hajime to be her chauffeur for a while longer.) 

Hajime responded politely to comments, as he always did, thanking his commenters for their compliments, answering their questions. He paid the exact same courtesy to this heart/spade person, who commented every three or four weeks from Uruguay, then Seoul, then Brisbane. 

Not so much with Tachibana, or with Mutsuki, or Kotarou, or Hirose, who sent more and more peremptory questions about who this person was or when they were coming home. 

Hajime thought for a while, and then he used a contact name from a wandering Kamen Rider he’d met a while ago, who had burbled on about friendship and the Kamen Rider network. It had been during school holidays, he remembered, because Amane-chan had been at home more. 

It sat wrong with him to ask for help for himself, but this was different. He was asking for help for what he hoped was his idiot, _idiot_ friend. So he sat on his bed, and he looked at his phone with the number already keyed into it, and then he pressed the icon to make the call. 

It rang. He spoke the name he’d been given. He was transferred. 

“Detective?” 

“Yes, this is Tomari Shinnosuke?” 

* * * 

Another fourteen months of waiting, of being poked and prodded by Detective Tomari’s science whiz Rinna-sensei who was convinced she could find a way to fix everything, of being adopted by Tomari’s odd little bouncy friend Go. (Why did this always happen to Hajime? At least he understood their mutual friend Chase, who was monosyllabic at best, much better.) 

Another fourteen months of the most frustrating contact with this heart/spade person. 

The kindest, most complimentary, brief comments, talking only about Hajime’s photos. Once, a “direct message” that said nothing more than _Hajime_ . 

Then nothing.

For weeks. 

* * * 

Tomari sent teams to the last few locations, and he and Go went with two of them. Hajime fretted in his own quiet way. Chase sat with him in the office one time for an entire hour without saying a word. 

“Here,” Rinna-sensei said proudly, presenting him with an elastic strap with a little box on it. The box was small and sleek. Smaller than his palm. He picked it up, and winced slightly at the feel of the vibrations going through his skull from his hand, but it was more strange than actual pain.

Besides, he’d endure no end of pain if it meant his idiot friend could come _home._

“What does it do?” he asked cautiously. 

She tapped his bicep. “I’m working on the design, and it’ll be smaller in time, Ha-ji-me-san~” she said happily. “Right now, if you put it on, it’ll block the signals. The frequency oscillates randomly, so your awareness of each other as Joker won’t be able to find a way through. You’ll be able to be in the same country without fighting!” 

Hajime looked up at her, and... and thought about crying. He thought about how they wouldn’t judge him, how they’d pat his back and say something comforting about times when they’d regained loved ones. He thought about how that would be entirely horrible, and he swallowed. 

“Thank you.” 

He put his hand through the strap, and tugged it up to his bicep. It fit well enough, not too tight, not too loose, but it sat oddly. (It sat absolutely perfectly, something he could handle for the rest of his life.) He picked up his trenchcoat from where it was draped over her visitor chair, and slung it on. 

There was dampness at the corner of one eye. Mortifying. Absolutely mortifying. He felt his lips push themselves together, waiting for her to say something. Humans so often did. 

She didn’t speak, but when she turned, there was a box of tissues on the corner of her desk that he could swear hadn’t been there two minutes before.

 _Kenzaki_ thrummed in his blood. 

* * * 

He hit “post comment”, knowing how risky and stupid it was. He had a life now! He travelled, he helped people, he met nice people, and okay, yeah, occasionally some assholes, but that was life, he got to sleep in a different place every couple weeks for the sake of safety and also because if he stuck around for years then people would notice him not ageing. And he was happy! He was definitely happy! 

He waited the seven hours for Hajime to see and respond anyway.

Kenzaki kept travelling. He held onto Hajime’s blog with the lightest possible emotional grip. He didn’t need it that bad. He could never go back again, after all. 

He helped the other Riders he met now and then, and was fiercely glad to be able to. 

...and he kept commenting. He even sent a direct message one time, but then he closed down the DMs and didn’t open them again. 

He’d never claimed to be smart. 

* * * 

“You were supposed to find him, not this!” 

Hajime watched through Tomari’s bodycam with his heart in his feet. A familiar figure, crumpled on the ground in the rain, longish hair doing very little to disguise the exhaustion and scrapes and bruises on the cheekbones. 

One of the men was protesting. “He ran! We tried to explain, boss, I even took out the photo you wanted me to show him! We didn’t hurt him!” 

* * *

“A little longer,” Tomari said placatingly, muscling Hajime back through the Drive Pit door. “It won’t be long, he’s just exhausted, it’s okay, it’s okay.” 

Hajime looked up at the man, damnably tall, and growled. “If he’s just exhausted, then why can’t I see him!” 

They were in the Drive Pit. It was private, it was secure enough. A little side room for Kenzaki’s every need. 

“Rinna has to assess his nutritional needs and what’s wrong with him. She has some good data because she knows you, but she needs time with him. He’s still unconscious. He won’t know you yet.” 

Hajime turned, driving his fist into the wall. Tomari – Shinnosuke – just watched him with understanding eyes, and in a way that was the most galling thing of all. He was an Undead. He was terrifying. He should be able to take out his anger on something inanimate and have those around him at least _react._ But no, this annoyingly tree-tall person had seen too much and knew too much.

“All right.” 

* * * 

Kenzaki was vaguely aware of a presence in the room. There was a steady _beep... beep... beep..._ from a foot or so away. Huh. He hadn’t been in hospital for a long, long time, but he supposed he hadn’t been doing a great job at taking care of himself. 

He let himself drift off again.

* * * 

Hajime’s foot faltered and he stutter-stepped when he actually saw Kenzaki. A hand went to the box on his upper bicep reflexively, but no, he wasn’t reacting because he needed to fight another Joker.

He was reacting because he needed to murder the person in front of him for being so hopeless at caring for himself. Shinnosuke had found intel about him being involved in various Rider fights in the last six months or so, and he clearly hadn’t bothered getting medical attention or eating since then. Go had even found him some photos, and another doctor Kamen Rider had sent a long apologetic email. 

(Hajime had responded with “if he needed to fight then he needed to fight, he wouldn’t want you to die in his place”, and then he’d near driven his fingernails into the palms of his hands.) 

Shinnosuke clapped him on the back, and gently shoved him towards the seat next to Kenzaki’s bed. There was a matching box on Kenzaki’s bicep, above the cannula. 

He sat down, and took the other man’s hand in his, as the door closed behind him. He ran through in his head everything he had to say, all the anger, all the frustration, all the “everyone else is coming and you’d better have good answers for them”, all the “why the hell didn’t you talk to me about finding a solution!”. 

Kenzaki’s eyes opened, and he blinked into focus. There was an instant’s panic as he saw Hajime, then he obviously did an internal check and realised he didn’t need to fight.

Kenzaki gave him a wondering, delighted smile. “H-Hajime.” 

Same voice. Same face, though he still looked exhausted. Same stupid, stupid smile-! 

Everything he had to say vanished. Hajime burst into tears, and leaned forward to desperately press his lips to Kenzaki’s.


End file.
